Rubblebucket Talk Through Their Joyous New Breakup Album, Sun Machine

Despite making a new album full of joyful, sparkly pop zest, Rubblebucket have had to overcome several tough personal hurdles these last few years. The Brooklyn-based experimental pop and dance funk duo has experienced an unusual number of life-changing experiences in a very short period of time. Band members Kalmia Traver and Alex Toth were romantic partners for 11 years, but their relationship came to a grinding halt amidst Traver’s ovarian cancer diagnosis and Toth’s fight against alcoholism.

But their troubles didn’t keep them away from music for long. After taking time to get healthy and sort themselves out, they knew they wanted to remain friends and that their musical journey together wasn’t over. “Being able to keep that friendship allowed us to keep the musical aspect of our relationship intact, and that was always the most fun part any way,” says Traver.

It’s already an impressive feat to make a breakup record as danceable and fun as their new album, Sun Machine, out today, but what’s even more impressive is that it’s still danceable and fun without shying away from addressing the pair’s bouts with tragedy and inner demons. The record doesn’t run away from their problems, put on a phony happy face and tell listeners to do the same. It insists that we find strength and wisdom in our low points and that being open about those challenges is a much more beautiful, empowering experience than sweeping them under the rug. For Traver, pain is power, and if that message combined with the jubilant horns, intoxicating rhythm and uplifting choruses of songs like “What Life Is” and “Party Like Your Heart Hurts” doesn’t move you, then nothing will.

Traver acknowledges that the integration of dark lyrical themes into a party record sounds a bit lofty on paper, but it makes complete sense to her. Asked whether the record is equal parts joy and pain, Traver responds with another question, “Isn’t that life?”

She’s currently reading a book of prose poetry called The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, and she takes inspiration from its full-circle view of the two emotions. “There’s a passage about sorrow, and he basically just says joy and sorrow come from the same exact place,” says Traver.

It wasn’t all darkness at the end of Traver and Toth’s relationship because they still had the happiness of their friendship to cling to. “I think that we both were very firm from the very beginning of the breakup that it meant so much to us to be able to still be friends after everything, and that in itself, is a pretty joyful prospect,” says Traver.

Traver is articulate and considerate, making clear that she doesn’t expect anyone to feel sorry for them, but rather hopes that listeners will appreciate their courage to share their vulnerabilities. “I felt a strong mission about the whole thing because it felt like if we could get out of this peacefully and portray it and share it, then that could possibly inspire others or at least keep strengthening that path for relationships to be able to be finite and to have beauty all throughout it even at the end,” says Traver.

The tracklist contains a series of spoken-word interludes, initially intended for documentary footage, but now serving as flourishes of realism while also sounding otherworldly. One interlude discusses nervous energy, another is a brief moment of laughter in the tour van and the last describes the feeling of prolonged physical pain. “Those were just little snippets that we both felt touched the central nerve of the change that was happening in our hearts throughout those really trying times that led up to this album,” says Traver. “We’ve never made an album where we sat down before the whole thing and said, ‘Okay this is what we want the album to be like.’ Until now.”

Traver explains that the band came up with a term called “dream element” which they wanted to include in each of the songs on the album, and those spoken-word bits are the most obvious manifestations of dream element. “We created a code word that doesn’t really have a word for it, but it was basically describing beautiful arpeggiated synthesizers with magical sprinkles of fairy dust,” says Traver. “We were like, ‘Every song has to have at least one moment of dream element.’ And those interludes are absolutely full-on dream element.”

The album’s ultimate goal is to spark emotions in others, and there’s a discernable hope that its bright web of feelings and sounds will connect with people. “It’s just cool to feel like you’re making a whole patchwork experience that all finally comes together and culminates in this little package in a CD or a vinyl,” says Traver, “just kind of propagating your little patchwork out into the universe, hoping it touches somebody.”

Rubblebucket’s new LP, Sun Machine, is out on August 24 via Grand Jury Music. They will embark on a North American tour this fall with support from Diet Cig, Star Rover, Toth and Turkuaz.